Dying to Live

I don’t often write about my personal life, because nothing about it is too terribly interesting. But I’m doing way too much thinking this morning…

This morning, I was sitting down organizing my pills for the week (which prompted a weird discussion on FB), and thinking “is this all I get to look forward to for the rest of my life?”

Between life at home, work, work-study, school…where’s the balance? Here I am, a father of two, involved in everything…where’s the end at? And why am I, at 30-still a “baby” to most people-on all this crap?

Men aren’t supposed to complain; we’re supposed to take on everything, keep our heads up, and push through. Most of the time, that’s easy to do. But sometimes, the weight of it all can be a lot. And when we reach that point, what do we do? The way we’re wired, we not supposed to go to other guys and say “this sucks.” Likewise, our culture dictates that we can’t (shouldn’t?) go to the women in our lives and say “this sucks.” As Musiq said, the “true definition” of a man is to “never cry…work ’til you die…got to provide.” That’s what we do…until life catches up with us, or we realize it’s passed us by.

When my dad died earlier, I said he could rest in peace because I could handle things. And don’t get me wrong, I can…but there’s a need for something more to life. There’s nothing like being smacked with your own mortality-either directly or indirectly-that makes you question yourself and whether you’re really ready for what’s to come.

Or maybe it’s just me…and somewhere, I got it wrong. Maybe in the midst of trying to save the world, I forgot to save myself first. Maybe somewhere I came to the conclusion that if the people around me were fine, what happened to me wasn’t important. Oops.

No, I’m not losing my mind or on the verge of flipping out. Just wanting to live a little, while I still can.